Facebook ... one week later

So I did it ... I joined Facebook. I'm pretty sure I was the last among my friends to do so, which is fine with me -- I'm usually last to embrace trends anyway.

Yes, Facebook is addictive, especially at first. It's scary. It's huge. It's impressive. What has me scratching my head, though, are the sociological implications of something like FB. In one week, I've found or been found by 111 friends. And sometimes, I get friend requests from people I don't even know. After briefly wrestling with the uncharted territory of FB etiquette and whether it was rude to decline someone, I came up with a rule that's so simple it's stupid: If I don't know or remember you, I won't make you my friend. I'm not being snooty, I'm being safe.

Which is all well and good until I get a friend request from someone I did know but haven't kept in touch with. In some cases this is a welcome thing -- I've always wondered what happened to so-and-so, and now I know. But in other cases, it's just weird. These are people to whom I literally haven't seen or talked since my high school graduation (in June of 1990 ... 18-1/2 years ago!). Do I really want them mucking around in my business? Reading my blog? Seeing pictures of my child?

The way I see it, life used to be divided into stages. You had high school friends, lots of them if you were lucky. Then you graduated, thereby ending most of those high school friendships. College starts ... new phase, new friends, new life. After college graduation, you move on to work, marriage, or grad school. New phase, new friends, new life. Motherhood? Definitely new phase, new friends, new life. (Most of the women I see or talk to on a daily basis nowadays didn't even know me five years ago. We're "mom friends.") As you travel through the different stages, of course you retain a few friends, the important ones who mean the most to you. But let's face it -- you lose most of them. That guy you had the biggest crush on in algebra class? Gone. The girlfriend you were inseparable with as a senior? Gone. The lab partner who always made you laugh? Gone.

And that seems sort of normal to me ... you move on, close the door on one phase and enter the next. So what does Facebook do to all this? All of a sudden those doors are being flung open, one by one. Is it good to give the past such a pervasive role in your present? I can't decide. I admit, it is fun to see what these people are up to now, two decades after I knew them. And along the way I've discovered some pretty neat stuff. My high school neighbor Kim is into animal rights and environmental causes -- like me! Several high-school-sweetheart type relationships that I'd confidently tossed in the "It'll never last" bag are, in fact, married and seem happy. One friend is listed on FB under his stage name because he's a professional musician. I'm suddenly finding people I never really knew well very interesting.

But I don't think I'm going to my reunion next year. Why bother? I've got Facebook.